Because the movie audience is so much larger than the book audience, some folks feel that once a novel has been made into a movie, the book has served its purpose and can be forgotten. This is especially so when the movie is a good one, and the book is an entertainment, not a literary classic.

But in some cases, it's worth reading the book, even if you've seen the movie. (And if this your situation, my post will give nothing away.) One example is Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love

Both movie and book are high points of the Bond series. A lot of people, including Sean Connery, have said the movie (the second one made, in 1963) is the best of the lot. Before any movies were made, the 1957 novel brought Bond to a new level of fame when President John F. Kennedy named it one of his favorite books, along with several more prestigious historical and biographical works.

The biggest difference between book and movie is that Bond comes in much later in the novel. The first70-odd pages take place in the Soviet Union. We encounter one frightening and grotesque Commie after another as the plot against Bond is conceived and set in motion. Fleming was a reporter in Moscow during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, and if his nightmare vision of the USSR is not accurate for the Khrushchev era in which the novel is set, it certainly is scary.

Another difference is that the plot is against Bond personally. There is a decoding machine involved, but it's not important. The object of this far-reaching conspiracy is to kill Bond. And not just kill him, but disgrace him.

The straightforwardness of the novel is another difference from the movie, which has a more convoluted, more conventional plot involving everyone's favorite criminal gang, S.P.E.C.T.R.E., playing British and Russians against each other to get hold of the decoding machine and sell it to the highest bidder. (Fleming called it the Spektor in the book, and it had to be renamed the Lektor in the movie, to avoid confusion.)

Simplicity and brevity give the book the advantage over the movie in other ways. In the novel, Bond takes the bait, the trap closes, and that's that. The movie's middle is fattened up with scenes that show off the sights of Istanbul, but are otherwise dispensable. After the famous fight scene in the train compartment (a highlight of book and movie), the movie adds on a couple of more action scenes that are rather anti-climatic. The novel quickly wraps up.

The Bond-girl is splendid this time out. In the book she is said to look like Greta Garbo. One assumes Fleming was thinking of her in "Ninotchka," in which she played an icy Soviet thawed on a trip to Paris. He named her Tatiana (for the heroine of Pushkin's poem "Eugene Onegin") Romanova (for the martyred Russian royal family).

Another big difference is the ending...but I get into "spoiler" territory if I discuss that, and I want you to read and enjoy the book!